When I saw the announcement for the gingerbread house contest, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I can remember like yesterday when my two girls, who are now little women (17 and 19 years of age as of today), started reading their first Harry Potter novel at the ages of nine and eleven. This is actually our first attempt at a gingerbread house, next year's might be on a smaller scale as this one takes up a card table!

The gingerbread makes up most of the castle, except for the turrets, which are ....shhhh.......Ice cream cones. The whole thing was mortared together with white icing, sprayed with a caramel coloring, and the windows and brick and turret toppings, as well as the roads and big doors were done with sugar glass and my other secret weapon.......sunflower seeds. My other secret weapon for the great hall and the look of the columns were done with pretzles.....and of course the Yule effect was done with powdered confectioners sugar and a flour sifter. Some of the figures were molded out of a cream cheese and confectioner's sugar "paste", some are marzipan.....and some are non-edible.

I have tried to do honor and justice to the creators of this magical world, although there was MUCH "communication" about the vast creative interpretations of the castle over the last ten years. The family in particular loved the Yule Ball time period, so I chose to use that as the theme, and to build my own "vision" from the shoulders of the masters. Hope you enjoy viewing it as much as I did making it.

Also, I would like to point out that since it was a large undertaking, there are lots of hidden goodies in the pics, so if you zoom in or enlarge, you may just see a giant spider, or a dragon, or maybe even a doxie or two in your wanderings. Happy Hunting!

addendum: I will try to answer questions the best I can on this forum pertaining to this project, however, my computer has met with a bad battery/cord problem, so I am sans computer right now and typing this from the most wonderful neighbor in the world's computer.

The trees and bushes were made with a lot of different things...some were made from pretzels, some were from air fresheners that we recycled/upcycled (whatever the kids are calling being frugal these days)...and some were snatched from the Dungeons and Dragons props.......lol

for those who weren't able to zoom, I'm so sorry......I did the close ups as much as I could, but the things takes up a whole entire card table......oi...The very last pic is the Durmstrang ship. (which some of you already knew)